This is why Christmas creep makes us cringe

For Mary Nicotera, the Christmas season begins when she hears radio adverts for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a rock band best known for its dramatic holiday music. This year, she heard the ads for the first time in August.

"By the time November and December comes along, I'm already sick of Christmas," says Nicotera, a vice president and senior bank manager at M&T Bank in western New York.

In the United States, Thanksgiving typically marks the start of the traditional holiday season and in western Europe, Christmas kicks off with the first Advent around the end of November or early December.

But retail watchers agree that every year the Christmas season seems to start a little earlier, with stores putting up holiday displays and airing seasonal ads soon as four or five months before the actual holiday.

But many of us find Christmas creep annoying at best and maddening at worst.

"There is no live and let live when it comes to this subject," says Kit Yarrow, a professor emerita of marketing and psychology at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

People had extreme reactions, including anger and panic, to "seeing Christmas trees before Halloween," she says, referring to a study she conducted. "The fact that people do care means something deep is going on."

Retail games

Complaining about Christmas creep isn't entirely new, according to Ana Serafin Smith, senior director of media relations at the National Retail Federation. Retailers have seen benefits of early ads as far back as the late 19th century, she says. But the volume of early Christmas has vastly increased.

Read the full article here